Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
“But I don’t like to fight,” the Slave said. “Or the thing is, I don’t know how.”
“It’s something you can’t learn,” Alberto said. “It’s a question of guts.”
“That’s what Lt. Gamboa said one day.”
“And it’s the truth, isn’t it? I don’t want to be a soldier either, but you learn how to be a man here. You learn how to take care of yourself. You find out what life’s all about.”
“But you don’t fight very much,” the Slave said, “and still you don’t get screwed.”
“I make believe I’m crazy. I mean I play stupid. You could do that too, so they wouldn’t walk all over you. If you don’t defend yourself tooth and claw they jump on you. That’s the law of the jungle.”
“Are you going to be a poet?” the Slave asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m going to be an engineer. My father’s going to send me to the United States to study. I just write letters and stories so I can buy my cigarettes. But that doesn’t mean a thing. You, what are you going to be?”
“I wanted to be a sailor,” the Slave said. “But I changed my mind. I don’t like the services. Maybe I’ll be an engineer too.”
The fog had grown thicker, and the lamps along the parade ground looked smaller and their light was dimmer than ever. Alberto fished in his pockets. He had run out of cigarettes two days before but he repeated the action automatically whenever he wanted to smoke.
“Got any cigarettes left?”
There was no answer from the Slave, but a moment later Alberto felt an arm against his stomach. He found a hand, which was holding out an almost full pack of cigarettes. He took one and put it between his lips, running the tip of his tongue over the end of it. He lit a match and brought the flame up close to the Slave’s face. The light flickered gently in the little grotto of his cupped hands.
“What the fuck are you crying for?” Alberto asked. He opened his hands and dropped the match. “Goddamn it, I burned myself again!”
He took out another match and lit the cigarette, dragging the smoke in and exhaling it through his nose and mouth.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Alberto took another drag. The tip glowed and the smoke mingled with the fog, which was very low, almost hugging the ground. The patio of the Fifth had disappeared. The barracks were a huge, motionless blotch.
“What’ve they done to you?” Alberto asked. “You shouldn’t ever cry, man.”
“My jacket,” the Slave said. “They’ve screwed me out of my pass.”
Alberto turned his head. The Slave was wearing a dark brown sleeveless sweater.
“I’ve got to go out on pass tomorrow,” the Slave said. “They’ve got me screwed.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“No. They took it out of my locker.”
“You’ll get docked a hundred soles. Maybe more.”
“It isn’t that. There’s an inspection tomorrow. Gamboa’s going to put me on the shit list. I’ve already been two weeks without a pass.”
“What time have you got?”
“Quarter to one,” the Slave said. “We can go back to the barracks.”
“Wait a while,” Alberto said, getting up. “There’s plenty of time. Let’s swipe a jacket.”
The Slave leaped to his feet but then stood there without taking a step, as if paralyzed.
“Let’s go,” Alberto said.
“But the sentries…”
“The hell with them,” Alberto said. “Can’t you see I’m going to risk my pass to get you a jacket? Yellowbellies make me sick. The sentries are in the latrine in the seventh section. There’s a game going.”
The Slave followed him. They walked through the thickening fog toward the invisible barracks. The nails on their boots scraped through the wet grass, and the beat of the sea, mingling with the whistle of the wind, invaded the rooms of the doorless, windowless building that stood between the classrooms and the officers’ quarters.
“Let’s go to the ninth or the tenth,” the Slave said. “Those midgets sleep like logs.”
“Do you want a jacket or a bib? We’ll go to the third.”
Alberto pushed gently at the door, which opened without a sound. He put his head in like an animal sniffing at a cave. There was a sound of peaceful breathing in the shadowy barracks. They closed the door behind them. “At the back,” Alberto whispered, his lips touching the Slave’s ear. “There’s a locker that isn’t close to the beds.”
“What?” the Slave asked him, without moving.
“Oh, shit,” Alberto said. “Come on.” They went down the barracks slowly, shuffling their feet, with their hands out to avoid obstacles. If I were a blind man, I’d take out my glass eyes and I’d say to Golden Toes, I’m giving you my eyes, but trust me, my old man’s got enough whores already, it’s enough that you should never leave your post except when you’re dead. They stopped by a locker and Alberto’s fingers slid along the wood. He put his hand in his pocket, took out a skeleton key, tried to find the lock with his other hand, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. And if I say, I swear, Lieutenant, I just came in here to get a book to study chemistry so I won’t flunk it tomorrow, and I swear I’ll never forgive you for the way my mother’ll cry. Slave, if you ruin me just for a jacket. The skeleton key scraped across the metal, entered, caught, moved back and forth, right and left, entered a little further, stopped, there was a click and the lock was open. Alberto twisted the key out. The door of the locker began to swing open. Somewhere in the barracks an angry voice broke out into incoherent mutterings. The Slave put his hand on Alberto’s arm. “Quiet,” Alberto whispered, “or I’ll kill you.” “What?” the Slave asked. Alberto’s hand carefully explored the inside of the locker, a fraction of an inch away from the woolly surface of the jacket, as if he were stroking the face or the hair of a beloved one and were relishing the pleasure of the imminent contact, still only sensing her. “Get the laces out of a pair of boots,” Alberto said. “I need them.” The Slave took his hand away, bent down, and started crawling. Alberto slipped the jacket off its hanger, put the lock back on the staples, and squeezed it shut with his hand over it to lessen the sound. Then he moved toward the door. When he got there, the Slave put his hand on him again, this time on his shoulder. They went outside.
“Has it got a name on it?”
The Slave turned on his flashlight and examined the jacket minutely. “No.”
“Go to the latrine and see if it’s got any spots on it. And make sure to use different-colored buttons.”
“It’s almost one o’clock,” the Slave said.
Alberto nodded. When they got to the door of the first section, he turned to the other. “And the laces?”
“I only found one,” the Slave said. He hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Alberto stared at him, but did not insult him or laugh at him. He merely shrugged his shoulders.
“Thanks,” the Slave said. He put his hand on Alberto’s arm again and looked at him, his timid, cringing face bright with a smile.
“I just did it for the fun of it,” Alberto said. And he added quickly, “Have you got the questions for the exam? I don’t know beans about chemistry.”
“No,” the Slave said. “But the Circle must have them. Cava went out a while back and he was heading for the classrooms. They must be working out the answers.”
“I haven’t got any money. That Jaguar is a crook.”
“Do you want me to lend you some?” the Slave asked.
“You’ve really got money?”
“A little.”
“Can you lend me twenty soles?”
“Twenty soles? Yes.”
“Great, great! I didn’t have a centavo. If you want, I can pay you back with some stories.”
“No,” the Slave said. He lowered his eyes. “I’d rather have letters.”
“Letters? You? Have you got a girl?”
“Not yet,” the Slave said. “But maybe I will have.”
“That’s fine, man. I’ll write you twenty of them. But you’ll have to show me hers, so I can tell what she’s like.”
The barracks was coming alive. In the various sections there were sounds of footsteps, of lockers closing, even a few jokes.
“They’re changing the guard,” Alberto said. “Let’s go.”
They went into the barracks. Alberto went over to Vallano’s bunk, squatted down and took the lace out of one of his boots. Then he began shaking the Negro with both hands.
“Motherfucker, motherfucker!” Vallano shouted.
“Come on, it’s one o’clock,” Alberto said. “You’re on duty.”
“If you woke me up too soon, I’ll murder you.”
At the other end of the barracks, the Boa was shouting at the Slave, who had just awakened him.
“Here’s the rifle and the flashlight,” Alberto said. “Go back to sleep if you want to, but the patrol’s in the second section.”
“No shit?” Vallano said, getting up.
Alberto went over to his own bunk and undressed.
“Everybody’s so sweet around here,” Vallano said. “Very, very sweet.”
“What’s the matter?” Alberto asked.
“Somebody swiped one of my laces.”
“Shut up!” a voice shouted. “Sentry, tell those fairies to shut up!”
Alberto could tell that Vallano was walking on tiptoe. Then he heard a telltale sound. “They’re stealing laces!” he shouted.
“One of these days I’m going to break your jaw, Poet,” Vallano said, yawning.
A few minutes later the Officer of the Guard blew a sharp blast on his whistle. Alberto did not hear it. He was asleep.
Diego Ferré Street was less than three hundred yards long, and a stranger to it would have thought it was an alley with a dead end. In fact, if you looked down it from the corner of Larco Avenue, where it began, you could see a two-story house closing off the other end two blocks away, with a small garden protected by a green railing. At a distance, that house seemed to end Diego Ferré, but actually it stood on a narrow cross street, Porta. Two other parallel streets, Colón and Ocharán, cut across Diego Ferré between Porta and Larco Avenue. After crossing Diego Ferré they ended abruptly two hundred yards to the east at the Malecón de la Reserva, the serpentine that enclosed the Miraflores district with a belt of red brick. It marked the farthest limits of the city, for it was built along the edge of the cliffs, above the clean, gray, noisy waters of the Bay of Lima.
There were half a dozen blocks between Larco Avenue, the Malecón and Porta Street: about a hundred houses, two or three grocery stores, a drugstore, a soft-drink stand, a shoe repair shop half hidden between a garage and a projecting wall, and a walled lot that was used as a private laundry. The cross streets had trees along both sides of the pavement, but not Diego Ferré. The neighborhood lacked a name. When the boys organized a soccer team to compete in the annual tournament held by the Terrazas Club, they named their team “The Happy Neighborhood.” But when the tournament was over, the name was not used any longer. Also, the crime reporters used “The Happy Neighborhood” to describe the long row of houses called Huatica de la Victoria, the street of the whores, which made it somewhat embarrassing. So the boys simply called it the neighborhood, and when somebody asked them which one, they distinguished it from the other neighborhoods in Miraflores, like the 28th of July or Reducto or Francia Street or Alcanfores, by saying: “The Diego Ferré.”
Alberto’s house was the third house on the second block of Diego Ferré, on the left-hand side. The first time he saw it was at night, when almost all the furniture from the previous house, in San Isidro, had already been moved. It seemed to him a lot larger than the other one, and it had two obvious advantages: his bedroom was further away from that of his parents, and since there was an inner garden they would probably let him have a dog. But the new house would also have its disadvantages. Every morning, the father of one of his friends had driven both of them from San Isidro to La Salle Academy. From now on he would have to take the express, get off at Wilson Avenue, then walk at least ten blocks to Arica Avenue, since La Salle, although it was a very respectable school, was located in the heart of the Breña district, with its zombos—half-Indian, half-Chinese—and its swarm of workers. He would have to get up earlier, and leave right after breakfast. And there had been a bookstore across from his house in San Isidro, where the owner had let him read the
Penecas
and
Billiken
behind the counter, and had even lent them to him for a day, warning him not to crease them or get them dirty. Also, the moving would deprive him of an exciting pastime: that of going up onto the roof to watch what went on in the Nájar family’s yard. When the weather was good they ate breakfast in the garden under bright-colored umbrellas, and played tennis, and gave dances at night, and when they gave dances he could spy on the couples who sneaked off to the tennis court to neck.
On the day they moved he got up early and went to school in a good mood. When he got out he went straight to the new house. He got off the express at Salazar Park—he still had not learned the name of that grassy esplanade hung out over the sea—and walked along Diego Ferré, which was deserted at that hour. At home he found his mother threatening to fire the maid if she started spending her time with the neighboring cooks and chauffeurs the way she had in San Isidro. After lunch his father said, “I’ve got to leave. It’s very important business.” His mother cried, “You’re lying again! How can you look me in the face?” And then, with the help of the servant and the maid, she began a very careful inspection to make sure that nothing had been lost or damaged by the movers. Alberto went up to his room and stretched out on the bed, aimlessly doodling on the jackets of his books. A little later he heard the voices of boys through the open window. The voices stopped, there was only the sound of a kick and the hum and slap of a ball as it bounced against the door. Then the voices again. He got up from the bed and looked out. One of the boys wore a flaming shirt, red and yellow stripes, and the other wore a white silk shirt with the buttons open. The former was taller, with blond hair, and his voice and looks and gestures were insolent. The other was short and stocky, with curly black hair, and he was extremely quick. The blond boy was playing goalkeeper in the door of a garage. The dark boy kicked the brand-new soccer ball at him, shouting, “Stop this one, Pluto!” Pluto, with a dramatic grimace, wiped his forehead and his nose with the back of his hand and pretended to fling himself at the ball, and if he stopped a goal he laughed uproariously. “You’re an old lady, Tico, I could block your kicks with my little finger.” Tico stopped the ball skillfully with his foot, set it, measured the distance, and kicked, and almost every kick was a goal. “Butterfingers!” he jeered. “Fairy! Look out for this next one. It’s going to the right, and boom!” At first Alberto watched them without much interest, and apparently they had not noticed him. But little by little he began to study their styles, and when Tico kicked a goal or Pluto intercepted the ball, he nodded without smiling, like a veteran fan. Then he began to pay attention to the jokes the two boys were making. He reacted the way they did, and at times the players gave signs that they knew he was watching: they turned their heads toward him as if they had appointed him as their referee. Soon there was a close exchange of looks, smiles and nods. Suddenly Pluto kicked one of Tico’s shots and the ball went sailing down the street. Tico ran after it. Pluto looked up at Alberto.